Fair Housing

Jacksonville Area Legal Aid working to save the home of local golf and civil rights legend Arthur Leroy Johnson

As a child in Jacksonville in the 1950s, Arthur Leroy Johnson would go get ice cream with his father and brothers at the Foremost Dairy in Riverside, the Jacksonville, Fla., neighborhood where he has lived for nearly 40 years and where he is struggling to hold onto his two-bedroom home with the help of Jacksonville Area Legal Aid. “My father worked two blocks from where I live today,” said Johnson, whose father was employed at the dairy. “At 5 o’clock in that neighborhood, all the Black people had to be out. There was a whistle that would blow. If you worked in that area, as a Black person you had to be leaving. The whistle was called Big Jim.” In 1986, Johnson, who is now 80, became a homeowner in that very same neighborhood when he bought an 1,100 square-foot, aluminum-sided home from a woman who employed his mother as a domestic worker. Johnson, who will be inducted into the African American Golfers Hall of Fame in May and had a successful career as a concert promoter, eventually ran into financial difficulties when prostate cancer and other health problems sidelined him from his job as director of First Tee – North Florida, a program that integrates golf with a life skills curriculum to help youth build strength of character. He took out a reverse mortgage on the 1912 home, initially borrowing just $24,000. But living on $941 a month in Social Security, he was having trouble making needed repairs to his home. Unable to get insurance, he defaulted on his reverse mortgage. After fighting to hold onto his home for 12 years, he ended up owing a total of $140,000 to pay off the mortgage.

2024-06-04T11:19:40-04:00February 13th, 2024|Client Stories, Fair Housing, News, Uncategorized|

A Decent Home

A Decent Home Community Film Screening Wednesday, 3/6/24 | 5:30- 8:00 pm Jacksonville University Swisher Theater 2800 University Blvd, Jacksonville 32211 A Decent Home addresses urgent issues of class and economic (im)mobility through the lives of mobile home park residents who can’t afford housing anywhere else. They are fighting for their dreams -- and their lives -- as private equity firms and wealthy investors buy up parks. - Free admission and snacks - Screening followed by panel discussion with local housing attorneys For more information, please contact: Missy Davenport, mdavenp@ju.edu, 904-256-7169

2024-02-14T12:39:54-05:00February 13th, 2024|Fair Housing, News, Uncategorized|

2023 Housing Counseling Successes – 115 Homes Saved from Foreclosure!

The dedicated housing counselors at JALA have proactively safeguarded 115 homes from foreclosure through a combination of loss mitigation options and rescue funds. Additionally, we have assisted numerous homeowners in comprehending their rights and evaluating alternatives to prevent foreclosure, ensuring favorable outcomes for their unique situations. By providing borrowers with essential information, we empower them to make informed decisions about their next steps, fostering successful homeownership both now and in the future. Our foreclosure prevention efforts extend support to families facing the challenges of losing a home, especially when no loss mitigation options or funds are available. While our primary focus is on preserving homes from foreclosure, we have also played a crucial role in aiding renters by equipping them with valuable information to help them maintain their residences. As a legal aid, we take pride in our role of saving homes, recognizing that our success is greatly amplified through the invaluable guidance and partnership with JALA attorneys.

2024-02-13T12:14:56-05:00February 1st, 2024|Fair Housing, News|

A record number of renters couldn’t afford housing in 2022, a new study finds

A record number of tenants couldn’t afford rent in 2022, according to a new study from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. The report found that in 2022, half of American renters—22.4 million households—were cost-burdened, spending a third or more of their income on housing costs. Out of the cost-burdened renters, 12.1 million households spent more than half of their incomes on housing costs. The report follows several years of historically high rent increases that pushed rents above pre-pandemic levels, where they have stubbornly remained. In the third quarter of 2023, rents grew .4% across the country, compared to a 15% rent increase in early 2022, the report said. “That means that those rent levels we achieved during the pandemic aren’t getting worse, but they’re also not falling,” Chris Herbert, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies, said during a panel discussion on the report Thursday. “So over time, we’ll see some easing of the problem as we have incomes hopefully outpacing those rent growths.” Low and mid-income renters wonder when that will happen after years of watching rents skyrocket as their paychecks failed to do the same. From 2001 to 2022, rents grew 21% when adjusted for inflation, the report found. During the same time period, renters’ incomes rose just 2%.

2024-01-30T17:33:18-05:00January 30th, 2024|Fair Housing, News|

Jacksonville City Council set to vote on eviction diversion program

Debbie-Lynn Hamm hit a rough patch this year. A mother of four young boys, the former Marine Corps servicewoman says when she lost her job as a corrections officer back in August, getting behind in her finances led to an eviction notice in September. “When you get those notices, I think that you just kind of get a numb feeling and you kind of shut down,” Hamm says. “It’s hard to think because you’re just scared.” Hamm eventually found help to stem the eviction proceeding through local nonprofit Changing Homelessness and a Veterans Affairs program that the organization administers, but she says the court notice hit her initially as a state of depression. But court deadlines couldn’t wait as she reflected on her life.  “I have been working hard, you know? I served my country. I got honorably discharged,” says Hamm. “I have all these skills and everything. What did I do wrong?”

2023-12-12T10:56:18-05:00December 12th, 2023|Fair Housing, News|

JALA saves Jacksonville couple’s home from foreclosure after job loss put them behind on loan

“Scott Stief,” 57, a local government employee, came to Jacksonville Area Legal Aid when he and his wife, “Emily” were about to lose their home to foreclosure. They had fallen behind on their home equity line of credit payments after Emily lost her nursing job of 25 years. Although Scott was working with the bank, the lender nonetheless started foreclosure proceedings. Scott and Emly were having difficulty determining the amount they needed for reinstatement of the loan because of the interest payments and type of loan, and they had been served with a foreclosure notice. JALA attorney Mike Pelkowski immediately began working to help the Stiefs avoid foreclosure, walking Scott through his court hearing. JALA housing counselor Joy Bryant-Baucom meanwhile corresponded with the bank’s lawyers regarding the reinstatement figures and helped the Stiefs obtain City of Jacksonville Foreclosure Intervention Program funds. With the right reinstatement information and the city funds, she was able to get a check sent to the bank in the amount needed to get the loan reinstated.

2024-01-04T11:05:55-05:00November 25th, 2023|Client Stories, Fair Housing|

Jacksonville set to fight ‘predatory’ PACE loan program

At least 160 Jacksonville homeowners this year have participated in what officials are calling a “predatory” home-improvement loan program. But this week, the Jacksonville City Council took steps to stop that loan program from doing any further business in the city. Officials also are making strides to help the property owners who have already taken out the loans that, in some cases, threaten to raise the homeowner’s tax bill by 1,000% and possibly risk their homeownership. The Property Assessed Clean Energy loan program — also known as PACE — began in Florida in the city of Kissimmee and Flagler County as a way to allow property owners to make upgrades to their house for zero down payment and full financing. The Florida PACE Funding Agency — special districts created under state law to administer the program — is in charge of the loans. But the program is exempt from the federal Truth in Lending Act, which requires lenders to make sure borrowers can knowledgably pay back loans. The program also is a tangle of public and private entities, third-party firms, contractors and salespeople, according to a Tampa Bay Times report on the lack of oversight.

2023-11-13T14:48:42-05:00October 6th, 2023|Fair Housing, News|

When subsidized housing isn’t safe, renters struggle to get help from HUD

Since June, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has inspected at least 1,200 HUD-subsidized properties, agency data shows. But thousands of inspections are overdue, despite agency goals to eliminate the backlog in spring of this year. For public housing owned by housing authorities and privately owned multifamily housing that receives HUD funding, the agency relies on inspections to hold landlords accountable for unaddressed safety hazards. Last month, Streetlight reported that longstanding problems with the inspection program and HUD’s oversight place renters’ lives at risk. Since then, HUD’s inspections and oversight of the properties it subsidizes have drawn attention from Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who urged HUD to ensure gas leak repairs were made at a Florida apartment complex at the beginning of August.

2024-01-04T11:13:04-05:00August 29th, 2023|Fair Housing, News|

New Freed to Run Challenge event in downtown Jacksonville to support Jacksonville Area Legal Aid’s Shelter for Elders endowment

Building on the success of Freed to Run, Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and Gunster Shareholder Mike Freed are launching a new initiative to create a Shelter for Elders endowment that will safeguard and strengthen JALA’s housing-related legal assistance for indigent seniors.  “With Freed to Run, we created permanent legal aid funding to serve Northeast Florida children whose health issues are further complicated by their civil legal needs,” Freed said. “Now we are going to do the same for our elders who are faced with housing insecurity in their golden years.” Along with the new endowment comes a new event format. While Freed to Run was a six-marathon series from the Florida Supreme Court in Tallahassee to the Duval County Courthouse, the Freed to Run Challenge will take place on the streets surrounding the courthouse over just two days, Friday, Nov. 17, to Saturday, Nov. 18. Individual participants and relay teams will raise funds for the endowment through peer-to-peer fundraising based on a challenge to complete half-mile laps around the Duval County Courthouse in a period of either 12 or 24 hours. The distance covered by each individual or team will be measured by counting the number of laps they complete around the courthouse at any pace they choose. Participants do not need to be runners.

2023-11-25T11:30:26-05:00August 18th, 2023|Fair Housing, Freed To Run, Tangled Title|
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